Ismā‘īl ibn Ḥasan Jurjānī (circa 1042–circa 1136, also seen as Jorjānī and Gurjānī), known popularly as Hakim Jurjānī, was among the most famous physicians of 12th-century Iran. In the period between the Islamic conquest and the time of Jurjānī, almost all scientific books by Iranians were written in Arabic, including such famous works as al-Qānūn fī al-tibb (The canon of medicine) by Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Jurjānī's medical encyclopedia, Zakhīrah-i Khvārazm’Shāhī (The treasure of Khvarazm’Shah) was the first major medical book in post-Islamic Iran written in ...

Historia general de las cosas de nueva España (General history of the things of New Spain) is an encyclopedic work about the people and culture of central Mexico compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590), a Franciscan missionary who arrived in Mexico in 1529, eight years after completion of the Spanish conquest by Hernan Cortés. Commonly referred to as the Florentine Codex, the manuscript consists of 12 books devoted to different topics. Book XI, the longest in the codex, is a treatise on natural history. Following the traditional division ...

This book is a compendium of medical works, printed in Basel in 1541 by the shop of Heinrich Petri (1508–79), also known by his Latinized name Henricus Petrus. It includes the Latin translation of the 30th chapter of the celebrated al-Taṣrīf li man ‘ajiza al-ta’līf (The arrangement of [medical knowledge] for one who is unable to compile [a manual for himself]) by the important Andalusian physician Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-‘Abbās al-Zahrawī. The book also contains a four-part work concerning the treatment of wounds and lesions by ...

Cornelius Aulus Celsius was a first-century Roman medical writer and the author of De medicina (On medicine), considered one of the most important medical treatises of late antiquity. The work’s encyclopedic arrangement follows the tripartite division of medicine at the time as established by Hippocrates and Asclepiades—diet, pharmacology, and surgery—and exhibits a level of medical knowledge remarkable for its time. This codex, from the Plutei Collection of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, changed hands a number of times. It might have belonged first to the library ...

This important text presents a detailed exposition of the harmony-based non-Galenic medicinal system of Paracelsus, i.e., Phillip von Hohenheim (1493-1541), the famous Renaissance author who advocated a new approach to the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. The treatise, comprising more than 100 folio sheets, is divided into an introduction and several chapters. In the introduction, the author derives the word kīmīyā from the Greek χημεία. He attributes the foundation of the discipline to Hermes, but credits Paracelsus with shifting the discipline toward the art of medicine and ...

Under the influence of Italian humanism and of his book-collector tutor János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443–1490) developed a passion for books and learning. Elected king of Hungary in 1458 at the age of 14, Matthias won great acclaim for his battles against the Ottoman Turks and his patronage of learning and science. He created the Bibliotheca Corviniana, in its day one of Europe’s finest libraries. After his death, and especially after the conquest of Buda by the Turks in 1541, the library ...

The study of poisons and their remedies has played an important role in the Islamic medical tradition since the first century of the Hijra, and mention of the treatment of poisoning is already found in the hadith. The major Arabic medical encyclopedias—al-Rāzī's Kitāb Al-Manṣūrī and Al-Ḥāwī fī al-Ṭibb and Avicenna's Canon—included chapters on poisons in the early tenth and early 11th centuries. Famous authors such as Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (circa 721–815) and Moses Maimonides (the Jewish philosopher, theologian, and physician whose medical ...

This manuscript was copied in 1682 by Ibn ʻAbd al-Nabī Muḥammad Ibn ʻAbd al-Nabī, as noted in the colophonof the manuscript. It preserves a comprehensive pharmacological compendium by Yūsuf ibn Ismaʻīl ibn al-Kutubī, also known as Al-Jam‘ al-Baḡdādī (The compendium of Baghdad). Ibn al-Kutubī was born in present-day Azerbaijan, but he spent the productive years of his life at the Abbasid court in present-day Iraq. His work is an abridgement of the famous Kitāb al-jāmiʻ li-mufradāt al-adwiya (The comprehensive book on simple remedies) composed in the 13th ...

One of the earliest pioneers in the history of medicine, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā al-Rāzī (also known by the Latinized version of his name, Rhazes or Rasis, 865–925 AD, 251–313 AH) was a Muslim Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher. He was born in the city of Rayy, near present-day Tehran, Iran, and spent most of his life between his birthplace and Baghdad, the capital city of the Abbasid caliphate. He taught medicine and was the chief physician in both cities. He made major and lasting contributions to ...

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (also known by his Latinized name Albucasis, circa 936–1013 AD) was an Andalusian Muslim surgeon, who was born in El Zahra (known today as Medina Azahara), near Cordoba, Spain. He is considered by some to be the father of modern surgery and is best known for his medical encyclopedia Al-tasreef liman ajiza an al-taaleef (The method of medicine). This work became a standard text in Europe for five centuries under its Latin title, Liber Alsaharavi de cirugia, after it was translated from the ...

Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (also known by Latinized versions of his name, Rhazes or Rasis, circa 865–925) was a Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher who made major and lasting contributions to the fields of medicine, music, philosophy, and alchemy and was the author of more than 200 books and treatises. He was known in the fields of both medicine and chemistry and undertook chemical experiments to create medicines to treat particular diseases. He followed a scientific approach in his research using the methods of monitoring and observation ...

One of the earliest pioneers in the history of medicine, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī (also known by the Latinized version of his name, Rhazes or Rasis, circa 865–circa 925) was a Muslim Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher. He was born in the city of Rayy, near present-day Tehran, Iran, and spent most of his life between his birthplace and Baghdad, the capital city of the Abbasid caliphate. He taught medicine and was the chief physician in both cities. He made major and lasting contributions to the fields ...